God's Provision For an Imperfect Mom

Tot School 33.5mo Twins – Wrecking Ball

There’s a hospital being built near our house and the boys are just fascinated with the tall cranes. When driving on 635 with all the construction, my boys love naming each piece of machinery. They like machines. So a few days ago on a blog swap I saw a clever mom that made her own wrecking ball. I knew the boys would have so much fun and would like this new piece of machinery.

To make our wrecking ball, I took an old knee high hosiery sock and put a wiffle ball down in the toe then tied a knot at the top. Not too complicated. Very simple to operate too.

I pulled out our wooden blocks and the three of us made lots of towers and castles. Lance’s version of a castle right now is a 1 story big collection of blocks. I don’t see the castle, but if he does then great.

James likes to build skyscrapers and that works best for this activity. So we built them up, stepped back and took a big ol swing with our wrecking ball. It took a few tries before they found the technique that worked best for each of them. James prefers the high in the air-wind up around the back and swing approach while Lance prefers the start by the knees and turn the whole body method. We talked about how Lance’s method made the blocks roll away while James’ method required hollering duck at anyone within a 12 foot radius. It’s a little pre physics here, which sadly my knowledge is pretty limited.

After a short while, I built my tower on a base of 2 blocks. I explained that the carpet was squishy so by spreading the blocks out over a bigger area it lessened the movement of the tower. We got 14 blocks high before it started to sway.

Then I made a base of 4 blocks. We were able to get it up to 22 blocks high before it swayed. I think if I had helped centered the blocks more, we might have gotten it higher, but I’m still happy with our 22. Before I built the tower I showed that 4 blocks moved less than just the 2 blocks.

I know that all that info was sinking in. Hahaha! I know it because while I was explaining further about a solid base, the boys ran full sped ahead into the tower. What they really did was learn that the higher the tower, the more crash it will make and that my friends is what most boys are concerned about. We built a few more super tall towers and had fun knocking them down.

This is not an activity for a mom who is afraid of a fewflying objects nor is it an activity for a boy who can’t control his excitement very well. As you can imagine, this could cause a broken window or a slug up side the head. I’m proud that my boys used some self-control and I’m claiming that as my mercy for the day.